


An Offer You Can't Refuse

by adspexi



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 15:05:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adspexi/pseuds/adspexi
Summary: Froc may have forgotten how he got his start, but Jackrum hasn't.





	An Offer You Can't Refuse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [macrocosmica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/macrocosmica/gifts).



It’s not, exactly, that Jackrum cared about Froc’s word as a man. Or his own, come to think of it; some of his lads left soldiering behind the moment the job was done, some took to trousers like they’d been born to it, and them as stayed weren’t always the ones who’d wanted the socks to begin with. Froc’s word as whatever he was, and Jackrum’s word as whatever  _ he  _ was, weren’t the issues under consideration. If you looked on paper, after all, there’d be no record of favors owed or preference given, just an extraordinarily successful officer who was a little fond of his old sergeant. 

But damn it, they’d had an agreement. 

Nothing so formal as a contract, of course. Nothing so official, nothing that would leave a trail or cause anyone asking questions. The point, such as it was, was rather to prevent people asking questions; there was nothing to tell if nobody ever thought to ask. Unfortunately, this state of affairs, while quite comfortably keeping Froc in command and keeping Jackrum’s own stake in his lads’ success hidden, did tend to mean that the agreement was, shall we say, less stipulated, than Jackrum might have preferred, given more welcoming circumstances and a world in which they weren’t causing half a dozen Abominations just by discussing it.¹ Jackrum remembered the terms of the agreement quite well, but Froc? Who could say. He’d had years of underlings praising him and generals valuing his input and following regulations- no, worse than that. He’d been the one  _ writing _ the regulations, and that never boded well for a willingness to bend them. No matter that a bending every now and then served not only Jackrum’s needs, but the greater good.²

¹One Abomination each for Jackrum and Froc’s general crossdressing situation; another for Jackrum’s perpetuation of same among his soldiers; one for Froc’s eyes, which unfortunately were quite a bright blue; one for Froc’s wanton falsification of paperwork that Jackrum might continue to serve lo these… er… enough years past his retirement; and one for Froc knowing how to write. Jackrum, of course, had his letters hisself, but as no senior officer could prove to have read Jackrum’s writing, it wasn’t really an Abomination, was it? Really it was more a wossname, that thing that those fussy wizards in Ankh-Morpork liked to talk about, with a cat and a box and something called a Dibbler sausage. You couldn’t prove whether or not the cat had been added to the sausage unless you opened the box. 

²Jackrum might not have been a very fit man, or very fit in general, but he was all for exercise when it came to regulations. You had to stretch them every so often to keep them nice and flexible.

* * *

 

As Jackrum said, he and Froc had never had a formal agreement. Jackrum dealt with information on a need-to-know basis³, and Froc didn’t need to know that he wasn’t the only skin-and-bones farmer’s get who’d got his life plan off a second-rate ballad. It might have heartened him to learn he wasn’t alone, or it might have frightened him enough to root out anyone who could guess at his secret. Jackrum wasn’t the kind of man fool enough to risk his life’s work on account of a Rupert, even one he’d trained up personally. That didn’t give Jackrum any special treatment; it just meant Froc thought he knew him well enough to exploit his weaknesses. As if Jackrum would have shown real weakness in front of his men. 

What he had done was to talk around the problem. Not the way he talked around normal problems: not blustering and bullying and threatening to call in statutes that had never been written, until nobody knew there had been a problem to start with. The kind of talking like you used for Abominations. The kind where the problem was the whole point. 

For instance, this being purely a hypothetical case,  _ you _ knew your uncle was wrong in the head ever since he’d been discharged, and your auntie Rosalie was doing all the sums to keep their farm running; but then again, Rosalie knew that your sweetheart’s only shirt had six buttons now, because he’d lost one to an angry sow and there was no money to spare for a new one. Had you had a proper row, or threatened one another, or even implied that the other was doing something which might be grounds for a threat, you might easily have regretted your actions- not that she would be the cause of your regret, of course. So you had a walk, and you had a chat- about purely innocuous topics⁴- and at the end of the day, everyone understood each other. 

Jackrum had never  _ said _ he knew that Froc’s socks were less than god-given, not in so many words, just as nobody alive could prove that Froc had ever given Jackrum to understand that he oughtn’t expect a drumming-out quite on schedule. Certainly, Jackrum hadn’t even implied to imply that there might be other lads out there like Froc, let alone that he was nowhere near the first nor the last; all anyone knew was that just as Froc had been a peculiar young fellow, so there might, someday, be another. And that other was not to be disturbed.

Froc had found paradise in the army; he’d had a good command, made a good name for himself. He didn’t need a friend like Jackrum, not anymore. And so, perhaps, he’d gotten big for his britches.⁵ It was only natural if he’d forgot what he owed.

But Jackrum was not a forgetful man. 

³That is, Jackrum needed to know everything on everyone, his lads needed to know how to walk with their socks, and the ruperts needed to know nowt but which way to point their swords in a charge.

⁴Given the changing nature of Abominations, you and your dear aunt would have naturally checked up on the latest additions to the Book before you set out on your walk. Jackrum had heard of a lad who’d tried once to make small talk about a rather large rock, only to find out that rocks had been Abominated the day before. He’d only tried the once. 

⁵The late Colonel Britch had been one of Jackrum’s first- and, unfortunately, briefest- success stories. 


End file.
